bvandeusen
5cd342d521
Five diversity mechanics — applied to both For-You and Songs-Like-X.
1. For-You seed rotates daily across the user's top-5 most-played
tracks. pickForYouSeedForDay uses userIDHash(user, day) mod
len(seeds) so today's mix uses an entirely different similarity
pool than tomorrow's. Within-day determinism preserved.
2. JitterMagnitude bumped 0.0 → 0.1. The scoring RNG is now seeded
by userIDHash(user, day) rather than the no-op, so near-tied
candidates shuffle daily without breaking within-day stability.
3. Head/tail split moves from 20+5 to 12+13. Roughly half the
playlist comes from the tail now (daily-deterministic via
tieBreakHash), giving the user substantially different content
while a 12-track anchor of strong similarity matches keeps the
mix recognizable.
4. Songs-Like-X seed artists shuffle daily across the user's top-5
played artists. pickSeedArtistsForDay applies a userIDHash-seeded
Fisher-Yates and takes 3.
5. scoreAndSortCandidates / pickTopN / pickHeadAndTail gain a userID
parameter so the RNG can be seeded per-user; existing call sites
updated; noopRNG removed.
Test fixtures widened similarity gaps (e.g. float64(50-i) instead of
(50-i)/50) so the new jitter (±0.1) doesn't perturb head ordering in
assertions about the head/tail mechanism. New seed_selection_test
coverage for userIDHash + pickForYouSeedForDay + pickSeedArtistsForDay
spans deterministic-within-day, varies-across-days, and graceful
degradation with small candidate pools.
PickTopPlayedTrackForUser replaced by PickTopPlayedTracksForUser
:many in the prior commit (b4801c2). The For-You seed lookup now
goes through pickForYouSeedForDay over the returned slice.
PickSeedArtists's LIMIT widened to 5 in the same prior commit.
For #392 Half A — system playlist content diversity. Half B
(per-user timezone scheduling) is a separate spec.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Minstrel
A self-hosted music server that thinks for you. Smart shuffle, contextual likes, ListenBrainz-aware radio, and Lidarr automation — server-side, so every client (web, mobile, Subsonic third-party) gets the same intelligence.
State and intelligence belong on the server, not the client.
Highlights
- OpenSubsonic-compatible. Existing Subsonic clients (DSub, Symfonium, play:Sub, etc.) connect with no special configuration.
- Server-side smart shuffle. Track-similarity vectors, dual-like model (general + contextual), and session memory keep mixes coherent across devices.
- ListenBrainz radio. Session-aware "more like this" pulls from ListenBrainz similarity data, not a static genre tag.
- Lidarr integration. Triggered scans, request-driven album imports, and a quarantine flow when something doesn't fit.
- Built-in web SPA. Full-feature library, search, queue, playlists, and admin — no separate frontend container to deploy.
- Flutter mobile client in flight. Tracking issue #356.
Quickstart
# compose.yaml
services:
minstrel:
image: git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/minstrel:latest
ports: ['4533:4533']
volumes:
- ./music:/music:ro
- minstrel-data:/data
environment:
MINSTREL_DATABASE_URL: postgres://minstrel:minstrel@db:5432/minstrel?sslmode=disable
MINSTREL_LIBRARY_SCAN_PATHS: /music
depends_on: [db]
db:
image: postgres:17
environment:
POSTGRES_USER: minstrel
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: minstrel
POSTGRES_DB: minstrel
volumes: [pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data]
volumes:
minstrel-data:
pgdata:
docker compose up -d
After the stack is up, visit http://localhost:4533/register and create your admin account. The first user to register on a fresh instance is automatically marked as the administrator; subsequent users can register through the same form (or via invite tokens generated from the admin Users panel, depending on how you configure registration).
For the full configuration surface, see config.example.yaml.
Configuration
Most operators only need the env vars in the quickstart above. A few extras worth knowing:
MINSTREL_BRANDING_APP_NAME— rename the instance ("Family Jukebox", "Office Music"). Surfaces in the header, browser tab, and OG share previews.MINSTREL_STORAGE_DATA_DIR— defaults to./data. Holds playlist cover collages and other generated artefacts.MINSTREL_LIBRARY_SCAN_PATHS— colon-separated list of music library roots to scan. Supports multiple roots (/music:/podcasts).
ListenBrainz integration (per-user scrobble + similarity tokens) and Lidarr integration (URL + API key) are configured through the admin Settings UI rather than env vars or yaml — per Minstrel's "config in UI" rule, integration settings live where operators can edit them without restarting.
Most operational keys have a MINSTREL_<SECTION>_<FIELD> env override. Recommendation and events tuning are yaml-only. See config.example.yaml for the authoritative surface.
Updating
:main— rolling, follows the dev branch's tested tip. Recommended only for the operator who's running an upstream-watching deployment.:v1.0.x— pinned releases. Recommended default. Database migrations run automatically at startup; rollbacks require restoring a Postgres dump.
Specs
Authoritative scope lives under docs/:
- Server spec — current implementation focus.
- Client spec — Flutter companion app.
Development
Two concurrent dev processes:
- Backend:
docker compose up— Postgres + Minstrel on:4533. - Frontend:
cd web && npm install && npm run dev— Vite dev server on:5173with HMR. The Vite server proxies/api/*and/rest/*to:4533so session cookies work.
Production build
docker build -t minstrel . runs the SvelteKit build inside a node stage, copies the output into the golang stage, and //go:embeds it into the final binary. The container serves the SPA from / alongside the API surfaces; no separate static-file server is required.
Branches
- Day-to-day work happens on
dev(or feature branches merged intodev). mainis protected — changes land via PR fromdev.- Releases are cut by tagging
v*offmain; the release workflow builds and pushes the container image to the Forgejo registry.
Task and milestone tracking: Fable (Minstrel project, id 12).
License
See LICENSE.